Work with the largest lists and libraries with predictive indexing and queries

SharePoint lists have long been used for planning, tracking, collaboration and data management. They’re used to track everything from t-shirts and lunch orders to NASCAR race standings and public health programs. Up to 30 million items can be kept in a SharePoint list. But until recently, storing more than a few thousand items required careful planning and administration.

Predictive indexing changes that. As lists grow beyond 5000 items, SharePoint senses the fields used in views and sorts and automatically adds indexes without user intervention or throttles. The modern user experience is also optimized to use those indexes, when available – and to retrieve data in sets to avoid throttles and unavailability.

Visualize column data with column formatter

SharePoint lists can be tailored to support almost any content or business application need. But until recently it has required special skills – custom development –to customize the formatting of fields and columns.

The column formatter lets people cut-and-paste JSON formatting scripts from our SharePoint Patterns and Practices site or other online examples as column properties. Over time, we’ll make the SharePoint column formatter a no-code solution, as easy to use as Excel. But this first step enables power users—or at least “super power users”—to take advantage of this powerful new capability early.

Custom forms with PowerApps

As we announced earlier this year, power users can use PowerApps to build customized SharePoint forms - which previously required InfoPath or custom code. Customized forms launch in the SharePoint list in a dynamic, responsive panel. For a consistent user experience, the default forms will now open in the same panel.

Custom forms with PowerApps

Almost any user can use PowerApps to customize the default forms for viewing and editing SharePoint data. And the customized SharePoint forms can take advantage of the full capabilities of PowerApps – no code connectivity to over 150 data services such as Google, Dynamics, Salesforce, Box, Twilio, and Mail Chimp.

Later this year, we’ll also rollout the PowerApps web part, so you can embed any PowerApp on any SharePoint page. PowerApps supports most of the scenarios that organizations addressed with InfoPath, and lets you take advantage of new cloud-first, mobile-first, connected capabilities to create custom forms and digital experiences.

Enrich user experience with new SharePoint web parts

We are also simplifying the process of integrating business apps with SharePoint pages. New web parts for Microsoft Forms, Power BI and PowerApps allow designers to combine those experiences on any SharePoint page.

Microsoft Forms and Power BI on SharePoint

Flow Launch Panel

Microsoft Flow brings makes it easy to streamline and automate business processes in SharePoint, across Office 365 and beyond. Flows can run automatically, based on a trigger event, or you can launch a flow for a selected item or document.

Today, we announced a new feature that lets you add values to a flow before it runs. For example, a “Request new equipment” flow might ask you to select a desktop, laptop, or a tablet, and send that selection to the team responsible for handling the request You are prompted to enter information in a panel that opens directly inside a list or library.

Flow launch panel

In-the-box Flows for streamlined collaboration

Many documents require a quick review before they’re shared or further processed.

Send for review

We are building a send for review flow into every SharePoint library, so you don’t have to custom build one. People can route a file to another user for feedback and review. Built with Microsoft Flow and integrated with the Flow approval center, signoff Flows are trackable in SharePoint as well as the Flow admin consoles.

For more formal approvals, such as document or page publishing, we’re also introducing a custom action to the Flow designer that will approve and publish a file. You can use this action to create a custom flow that can be triggered automatically by an event or launched from the command bar.

If you want to know more, or if you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us: